Trump’s Dorian brawl leads to dispute within US weather agency

Bloomberg

As President Donald Trump dragged the brawl over his forecast for Hurricane Dorian into a sixth day, a US agency released a statement bolstering his account — prompting a scathing response from the leader of an agency union.
Trump has repeatedly and defiantly continued to defend his assertion that Alabama was in Dorian’s path. He showed White House reporters a map that he had personally altered — by drawing a black line — to bolster his argument. He tweeted photos of August 29 and August 30 forecasts that showed Alabama within the probability zone of tropical storm-force winds. And he released a video on Twitter.
Donald Trump held up an August 29 map from the National Weather Service, showing initial projections of Dorian’s track into Florida, at the Oval Office.
“From August 28, through September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its statement.
“The Birmingham National Weather Service’s tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time,” NOAA added in the statement, which was not attributed to any official.
The weather service’s office in Birmingham, Alabama, had said in a tweet that “no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama,” contradicting the president, who has persisted in arguing that his warning had been accurate.
Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said: “Let me assure you the hard working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management.” In a telephone interview, Sobien said that the statement was “like nothing I’ve ever seen, ever,” and could prompt people to ignore future warnings.